Home at last

We arrived home in Bonney Lake on Tuesday after a very nice visit with Lee's Mom in Torrance where we had a belated Thanksgiving feast with his brother and sister-in-law. Lots of laughter and the traditional kidding.

When we arrived in San Diego there was a message from Lee's daughter, Julie, that she was "with child" and, surprise, she is going to have twins. The due date is in May and all is going very well. You can read more, if you would like, on their blog at http://moutonetfromage.blogspot.com/ but here are the first pictures. Very exciting stuff.





We are very happy to be home. It was a wonderful trip but there is nothing like this country and your own bed!

November 24, 2007 – San Diego, California, USA

We arrived at our final port in San Diego this morning to a beautiful full moon just before the sun came up. It took about two hours to get off the ship and then another hour to work through the baggage claim, customs etc.

We got to our hotel and contacted Steve & Deb (Lee’s bother and sister-in-law) who took us on a quick tour of San Diego.

We had cocktails on their new boat in the harbor just below our hotel and are now getting ready to call an end to our trip.

It has been an amazing adventure that we look forward to telling each of you about as we catch up individually. We visited some wonderful cities, met some wonderful people and are happy to be home. We have over 900 pictures that did not make it to the blog that we will gladly share (but only upon request). We are off to Lee’s mom’s house tomorrow for a belated Thanksgiving and then back home on Tuesday.

November 19, 2007 – Honolulu, Hawaii

We both have been to Honolulu several times so we took a special tour of the historical military sights on Honolulu. Starting off with the USS Arizona Memorial we also saw historic sights at Schofield Army Barracks and Fort Shafter. Our guide was a very well informed veteran who told some very interesting stories of some of the historical figures from December 7th as well as some little known, but documented, facts on events leading up to the attack.

Our sail away was right at sunset so we got the chance to see Honolulu, Waikiki and Diamond Head from the ocean as we sailed around the south tip of Oahu on our way to San Diego.

Our next blog entry will probably not be until we get back to Bonny Lake since we will be busy visiting Lee’s family (brother Steve in San Diego and mom in Torrance) before we fly back to Sea-Tac on Tuesday. We hope you all have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving holiday.

November 18, 2007 – Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Today was a relaxing day spent with Cheryl (Lee’s daughter who lives in Kailua) who surprised us with lei greetings. We got the chance to spend the day catching up on Cheryl’s life and also see the changes to Kailua since we were here a couple of years ago. We also got haircuts and stocked up on Cheetos for the trip home.

Cheryl took us to lunch at Bubba Gump’s where we sat on Forest Gump’s bench by his “box of chocolates”. She almost walked our legs off up and down the hills of her town. It was very good to see her again and also to see her so happy and doing so well.

November 17, 2007 – Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean

We have been told that Kona, Hawaii is out here someplace and that we will arrive there in the morning. The past 4 days at sea have been very relaxing but also filled with some fun along the way.

When we crossed the equator there was an initiation ceremony into the Son’s of Neptune which recognizes a crew member’s first crossing of the equator. We were too busy with port visits when we crossed the first time but made up for it this time. The crew members are labeled pollywogs, had their crimes against King Neptune read, forced to kiss a fish and then dunked into a mixture of yogurt, fish and spaghetti. Great fun!

Sunset at the equator.

We got the opportunity to tour the bridge of this beautiful ship. A rare teat post 9/11.

Millie wearing traditional Bali formal attire that was a gift from our head waiter.

November 13, 2007, Apia, Samoa

We have been sailing through an area that has no satellite coverage – since nobody lives out here – so we have not been able to connect to post to the blog. Yesterday, during the 24 hours that really did not exist the Captain spoke up on the PA system to tell us that we had lost one of our drive motors and would be late getting into Apia. Now we come from airline families, not seafaring families, so the loss of an engine – when they only have two - is something that got our attention. We made excellent progress with only one motor (17 knots rather than 23) and we were only about 3 hours late getting into port.

Apia, Samoa is the only real town in Samoa and is where Robert Louis Stevenson lived, wrote and died. There are 9 islands of Western Samoa and this one – Upolu – is the largest. It is a pretty laid back town of only about 40,000 people who all seem to want to say hello and welcome. They are probably just as happy to have us leave but who can blame them. There are not a lot of tourist hotels here but there probably will be someday. It is a beautiful island paradise. We were only here for a few hours due to our engine problem so we only got to walk around the little town and did not go out into the country side like we usually like to do.

November 12, 2007, Suva, Fiji Islands

To celebrate Millie’s birthday, today we jumped onto a local 50’s era bus and drove up into the rain forest outside Suva, Fiji. After an hour driving over some of the worse “paved” roads we have ever been on and having our bones rattled we came to a little wide spot in the road that had a little shop. The shop sold wooden coffins! It also was the jump off point for a run up the Navua River in a wooden long boat (undoubtedly made by the coffin shop). We donned our life jackets and stepped down into

the bottom of our boat which was filled with about six inches of water but our boatman was bailing so we knew we were in good hands. We took an exhilarating ride up the river for about an hour and saw lots of rain forest, waterfalls and villages. Very beautiful! We stopped for lunch at a village whose ancestors practiced cannibalism until the 1920’s and then back to the boats for a ride back down the river during a torrential thundershower. We arrived back at the coffin maker and our rattlely bus in fine, but wet shape. So Millie had a day to remember, even if a bit wild and wet.

We are off to Apia, Samoa but first we have to do that thing with the International Dateline. We get two Tuesdays this week so while we have one whole day of sailing before we get to our next port, we actually will arrive there tomorrow based on the calendar. We gave up a Wednesday on the way over here but we now get to have two Tuesdays. Not sure if that is fair since everyone knows that a Wednesday is a better day than a Tuesday. Anyway, this issue has kept us up at night - well, actually just Lee – since it just doesn’t make any sense that you can just run through a whole day but then have a do-over. It is just too much to think about right now – we’re going to get something to eat.